Thursday Music News

As we announced yesterday, Yo La Tengo will return with a new album, Fade, on January 15. This morning, the band released a video for a new track called “Before We Run,” directed by Georgia Hubley’s sister Emily. The animated video, which runs for over six minutes, features the same tree that graces the album’s cover and dozens of colorful polka-dots. Not quite as trippy as the Tame Impala video we showed you last Thursday, but close.

Himanshu Suri, better known as Heems from Das Racist, has released the follow-up to last year’s Nehru Jackets mixtape. The new mixtape, Wild Water Kingdom, is named after the Pennsylvania water park, but as Suri told Rolling Stone earlier this month, water has been a big inspiration for him in general. “I like water a lot and this past summer, I tried to be out by the beach as much as I could,” he said. “I was out on the Hamptons, I was out on Martha’s Vineyard, I was out in Goa last year. I like going to Hawaii a lot. So I’ve found that water is my friend.” If you’d like to make Wild Water Kindgdom your friend, you can download it here.

Dirty Projectors teamed up with a seven-piece string section to deliver a masterful performance on Letterman last night. The Brooklyn-based band played “About to Die,” a track that appears on both the Swing Low Megellan LP and their new About to Die EP. Dirty Projectors are taking a brief break from touring, but they’ll head to South America later this month and play one more show in New York in January. Watch the Letterman performance below.

This morning, former Girls frontman Christopher Owens announced on Facebook that he’ll be embarking on his first US tour as a solo artist. The tour will begin at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall on January 15, the same day that Owens’ debut solo album, Lysandre, is due out on Fat Possum/Turnstile. A full list of tour dates is available at Owens’ website; the presale has already begun, and the general sale will begin tomorrow.

Finally, dream pop artist Davye Hawk (a.k.a. Memory Tapes) has shared a gorgeous new track called “Neighborhood Watch.” According to Prefix, Hawk’s upcoming LP, Confusion/Grace, will include only six tracks, though it’s run time is nearly forty minutes. Look for the album in record stores on December 4, and listen to “Neighborhood Watch” below.